Manufacturing operations have significantly evolved in complexity through the integration of sophisticated automation devices and associated methods. Gains have been realized both in productivity and reliability as past reliance on human judgment and manipulation has been replaced by processor-based systems.
An example of this is manifested in the sophistication of production equipment used at final assembly. Manufacturers are continually striving to replace manual assembly operations with highly complex processor controlled automated systems. They are reengineering existing factories to pull components through the manufacturing process and assemble them just in time at final assembly, instead of batch processing of subassemblies as was more prevalent in the past.
But any gains in speed and repeatability from automating are forfeited if flexibility is forsaken. For example, given no constraints in the way of budget, space, time, and assembly line changeovers, the skilled artisan can likely construct a dedicated purpose robot for a given process. Pick and place robots, for example, usually consist of adversely large, complex, and expensive three axis manipulators moving between a queue of workpieces and an assembly line. What is lacking is a compact and highly flexible system that is adaptable for changing the workpieces it processes on the fly, that maximizes process utilization by minimizing the travel between the workpiece queue and the point of assembly, and that operates at near 100% utilization with respect to continuously supplying the next workpiece in the queue for picking and placing. It is to those needed improvements in the art that the claimed embodiments are directed.